At last this standout has been issued on DVD which is promoting it as the film that introduced the world to Francois Pignon. Perhaps not uncoincidentally the DVD appears at a time when screenwriter Francis Veber has adapted his screenplay - he wasn't yet directing - for the stage with Richard Berry as Ralf Milan and Patrick Timsit as the eponymous pain in the ass. In an interview printed in the program for the play Veber speculates on why Billy Wilder's remake, Buddy, Buddy, was so disappointing; Veber suggests that Walter Matthau had such a backlog of outstanding comedy roles behind him that it was difficult to accept him as a dispassionate hit-man. There's probably something in what Veber says because the opposite is true of Lino Ventura who LOOKS dangerous and had an equally impressive backlog as a gangster in French polars. One early scene illustrates this perfectly; driving to his assignment he stops in a diner and inadvertently parks in front of a large camion. When the trucker, a big guy, gets ready to leave he lets out a squawk when he is unable to get out. The counterman taps Ventura as the culprit and suggests he move his car but quick. 'I'm finishing my coffee' he says quietly, the juggernaut jockey springs forward to confront him face to face. 'I'm finishing my coffee' says Ventura just as quietly and just as menacingly and the big guy backs down. It's difficult to imagine Matthau being as effective as that, Lee Marvin, no problem. The plot obeys all the rules of farce in which one person or even a group of people have a deadly serious objective and are single minded in trying to achieve it whilst a chain of unconnected events spin out of control around them preventing the task from being accomplished. Milan has been hired by the mob to take out a witness when he is brought into the court at exactly two.p.m. and he clings to that objective tenaciously despite the chaos surrounding him initiated by Francois Pignon, Jacques Brel. Veber's screenplay is so tightly constructed that it hardly matters that Jacques Brel is to acting what Jim Carrey is to Greek Tragedy. Veber's masterstroke is to delay the revelation that this is a farce by spending a whole reel establishing a polar and only gradually permitting his real intention to become evident. Even after twenty years it still comes up fresh.
Review of A Pain in the Ass
